Here comes a music rant. It's about "heuristic imitation" in Stravinsky. It is specifically comments and thoughts on a particular artice by Martha Hyde (included in the Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky edited by Jonathan Cross) that talks about Stravinsky's neoclassicism. At one point in the article, Hyde mentions different kinds of imitations that Stravinsky uses and heuristic imitation, as she calls it, is one of them. It's an interesting concept. It's not exactly a revelation. I mean, Stravinsky used a classical form! W007! Not terribly exciting. However, this explanation/example does point out the intricacies of what is and isn't involved in such an imitation. I also like the article because it's conducive to the reader making an abstraction of heuristic imitation in general and how that idea could apply in variety of ways to various situations. Fun fun fun. So here goes. Excuse the spelling errors:

As far as the article concerned, as it specifically applies to Symphony (in Ut), heuristic imitation involves abstracting out and following the form of an earlier time. So the Symphony in C, first movement, follows the Sonata-Allegro form of a first movement in a Beethoven symphony. Both have an intro, exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda. Both have recognizable themes and in this case, the C-G-B motive in Symphony in Ut matches the same pitch content motive from the Symphony in C by Beethoven. But heuristic imitation necessarily does not include other paramaters when imitating. Igor doesn't imitate Beethoven's functional harmony, most importantly, and that destabilizes everything. He has regular meter, a "tonality" of C (as implied by the title), first and second themes, and all the makings of a classical sonata. But without a functional harmonic context, the return of the recapitulation or the rapid key changes of the development (as it was in the days of yore) means nothing. It's well and good that Stravinsky moves from C (tentaively) to d to G back to C. I-ii-V-I, or at least that's what one would say with a functional 18th century harmonic context. The way Stravinsky does it, however, is completely different. There is no preparation for the ii, no bridge between one key and the next, which obliterates the connection (at least harmonic) of C to d. But without that connection, both harmonies lose context. C is no longer a tonic but just another tonal area and d has no relationship to C, nevermind one that implies a minor ii. This kind of imitation at one level but not at another is a double edged sword. On the one hand, the formal structure of the piece (as it is sonata form) gives the audience a very strong sense of the lineage and the genesis of the piece. Hyde calls this "ambition to enact a specific historical and cultural journey" the strength of heuristic imitation. However, since other parameters untouched by heuristic imitation (in this case functional harmony most importantly) clash, necessarily, against the historical aspects that ARE imitated, one could tend to laugh off works using heuristic imitation as derivative. Hyde thinks that the combination of these two factors help heuristic imitation simultaneously connect and update certain form or style. The Symphony in Ut connects us back to the classical symphony by virtue of its form imitation but at the same time "advertises" (to use Hyde's term) its separation from it and by doing so, updates the original form with a new context.

Now, having said all that, the meaning of Heuristic imitation, as Hyde uses it, is that of imitating one or more parameters of that which is being imitated, but necessarily altering the remaining parameters. This is an abstraction I make, to myself, about the general meaning of heuristic imitation. For example, Stravinsky used his own "bitonal" harmonic approach of juxtaposing C Major and e minor in the first movement. To reduce out more minor factors, Stravinsky has in exsence imitated the form but not the harmonic implications of the Sonata form. We could do a thought experiment in which Stravinsky has chosen to do the reverse. He could very well have imitated the functional harmonies of classical times but applied to it a novel form. Dominants would still be preceded by pre-dominants (ii perhaps) and there would be harmonic links between the tonic and all other chords, establishing the same kind of tension resolution harmonies we see in classical tonal music. However, Stravinsky could then manipulate musical events temporally so that the form of the movement is not sonata form, but something completely stravinskian. He'd be limited to using the harmonic vocabulary of his imitation (for example resorting to using full diminshed sevenths to highlight a transition or section) but this limitation is no more so than that of the limitation placed upon form in Symphony in Ut as wee see it now. One could imagine parametrizing the rhythm and expressions of a certain dance (let's say scherzo) and changing its harmonic vocabulary, producing a Stravinsky scherzo that MUST, on the one hand, make us think of the classical scherzo and, on the other hand, make us realize how this modern one differs and updates the old ideas. It's natural for us to think of altering the harmonic vocabulary and retaining the form when doing heuristic imitation because after all, form is a more abstract entity than harmony. Form is usually achieved over the grand scale of a piece and harmony can be active on the most minute note-to-note to the most vast levels. We have forms. They are extremely abstract concepts into which we can pour countless manifestations. Changing the harmonic vocabulary is just one of those manifestations. I propose that form is more abstract than harmony and so trying things in reverse (using a set vocabulary with different forms) is much harder for those of us looking back up on an age.

So, to be concise, heuristic imitation is strong, wholesale imitation of one or multiple characteristics of a piece without taking on all of its other properties. It's quoting out of context. It's using the syntax of an ancient poem with modern words. And now it's getting late so I better be off before I rant more.